Time to tackle regulatory reform

On the classic TV show “Star Trek,” space was the “final frontier.” In the political world, it’s the byzantine world of the federal regulatory agencies that is the final frontier. While we struggle with health care reform, energy reform and entitlement reform, no reform may be more critical to the health of our country than regulatory reform.

The truth is that we will never be able to successfully reform our health care system — or our energy and environmental policy, or entitlements, or education or, quite frankly, to tackle any other challenge facing this country — until we begin the difficult process of regulatory reform.

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When it comes to health care reform, patients, providers, insurance companies and employers all face a tangled web of new and ever-changing regulations as a result of the passage of Obamacare. Some business owners, confused and frustrated, are openly talking about just paying the fines for noncompliance. They are making the business decision that noncompliance might be easier than trying to comply with the new regulations.

While the health care regulations have left the relevant players confused, regulations in the energy and environmental arena have not just created confusion; they have become a bureaucratic dead end. Thousands of jobs have been lost, and energy prices have increased dramatically, as a result of inaction by regulatory agencies charged with overseeing energy exploration.

The truth is that, intertwined in almost every major challenge we face is a complex bureaucracy — a bureaucracy that often undermines well-intended efforts to reform whatever sector that agency oversees.

In the House, my former colleague Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, has put the issue of regulatory reform front and center. Issa recently unveiled a new website, www.americanjobcreators.com, which is soliciting input from the companies, individuals and industries now forced to make their way through the federal bureaucratic maze.

This is an important first step. Few know more about the unintended, and too often job-killing, consequences of the regulatory bureaucracy than the folks who deal with these agencies every day.

Issa is not alone. Even President Barack Obama has put the issue of regulatory reform front and center. In fairness, the president has said the right things — so far — when it comes to regulatory reform.

“If there are rules on the books that are needlessly stifling job creation and economic growth, we will fix them,” Obama told The New York Times. “Already, we’re dramatically cutting down on the paperwork that saddles businesses with huge administrative costs. We’re improving the way FDA evaluates things like medical devices, to get innovative and lifesaving treatments to market faster. And the EPA, based on the need for further scientific analysis, delayed the greenhouse gas permitting rules for biomass.”

While the president has said the right things, there is a great deal of concern about over-reaching federal regulations in this new political environment. Even last Congress, when the president enjoyed large Democratic majorities in both chambers, we saw the Obama administration dangle the threat of unilateral regulatory action in the form of Environmental Protection Agency regulation of greenhouse gases to coerce Congress into passing a risky cap-and-trade scheme.

In this new political reality, with Obama’s majority in the House replaced by a large GOP majority and with a slim Democratic majority in the Senate, many in the business community fear that the administration will use regulation to enact sweeping changes where Congress cannot act.

It is indeed time for Congress and the president to tackle regulatory reform. We need to engage all the players, in a bipartisan fashion, to find ways to make our regulatory agencies work smoothly and efficiently. We need to find ways to eliminate unnecessary red tape, end duplication and make the federal bureaucratic maze easier for small businesses — the engine of job creation — to navigate.

In other words, we need Congress and the president to boldly go where no man has gone before.

Tom Davis, who served as a Republican congressman from Virginia, was the National Republican Congressional Committee chairman from 1998 to 2002. He is the former chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. He is now president of the Republican Main Street Partnership, a moderate GOP organization.